Articles by Willie Shubert

2020 was supposed to be a big year for forests. Six years ago this month, world leaders gathered at the UN Climate Summit and endorsed the New York Declaration on…

Three critically endangered African white-backed vultures saved from poisoning last year have been released back into the wild in Zululand, South Africa. Those involved in local vulture conservation have welcomed…

For the past 15 years, the European Union and tropical timber-producing countries have developed innovative collaboration mechanisms to fight illegal logging and timber trade, and to make sure wood imports…

Wild boars have descended from the hills and entered Barcelona, and sika deer have been seen strolling deserted metro stations in Japan. While such unusual visitors will retreat as Covid-19…

Ten days after showing his first symptoms, Dannes Piaguaje struggled to breathe as he leaned over a traditional steam remedy in his leaf-thatch jungle home in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The…

In 2014, the West African nation of Liberia faced an epidemic outbreak of Ebola, which claimed over 11,000 lives globally. To combat the spread of disease, Liberians were urged to…

Did you ever think about the information we can gain from a simple sample of feces? Wildlife researchers have, and the information they obtain from poop samples can tell them…

Meet Heng Kim Seng, Cambodia's bat man. In a few years, he went from rice to riches all because of bats. Under the Khmer Rouge, he hauled human waste to…

ATALAYA, Peru — Pascual cuts the motor and our dugout canoe glides below a massive tree trunk suspended a few feet above the river. I motion to the bank. “We…

NEW YORK CITY — Climate change continues to pose an existential threat to many low-lying Asian and the Pacific island countries, with rising seas putting people’s lives, livelihoods, environment and…

Recent studies of Twitter posts have shown that people can be quick to shrug off extreme weather as normal. However, researchers are also finding that some wildlife — maybe better…

NEW YORK — Today marks the start of protests across the planet as millions witness the youth-led climate strike demanding governments take urgent and transformative action on climate change. Young…

Coral reefs in Hawaiian waters are facing the prospect of another major bleaching event as ocean temperatures rise above the norm. “We found the first signs of [coral] bleaching off…

Earlier this year, the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet and Health published its version of a sustainable diet that could feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to inhabit the…

Emboldened by a right-wing president and congressional approval, a Colombian public-private partnership is working through a licensing process to build a deepwater “megaport” on the country’s northern Pacific coast. Arquimedes…

Don Lizardo was sitting in his hammock, rocking gently back and forth, as he told us heartbreaking stories about working in haciendas when he was younger. We were sitting in…

QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park sits in a unique position on the equator, between the Andes mountain range and the Amazon rainforest, which has allowed a rich and…

NAPO, Ecuador — Gloria Ushigua, president of the Sápara women’s association, stops by a large, thin, spindly tree that looks almost dead, and breaks off a thin branch. Running her…

The Brazilian government’s environmental agency, IBAMA, has so far this year imposed the lowest number of fines for illegal deforestation in at least 11 years, while the country’s other leading…

Brazil’s National Congress has overturned changes set by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that transferred the decision-making power of indigenous reserves demarcation to the Ministry of Agriculture. The move gives that…

“I once asked a Matapí elder if he could spare an hour or two to tell me about what palms he knew, and how he used them,” says Rodrigo Cámara-Leret,…

PALAWAN, Philippines — Twenty years ago, people in this fishing village in the municipality of Quezon, on the Philippine island of Palawan, would just walk to the shore, throw a…

PALAWAN, Philippines — In the wilderness of the Philippines’ southwestern island province of Palawan, dubbed the country’s last biodiversity frontier, lives a scaly mammal found nowhere else on Earth: the…

PUYO, Ecuador — An indigenous community in Ecuador has filed a lawsuit against the government for failing to consult with it before putting its territory up for sale to the…

I grew up in Southern California, just north of Los Angeles, and spent time in nature consistently throughout my childhood. I credit the under-the-radar natural wonderland of Southern California, as…

In January 2018, the Cofán indigenous people of Sinangoe, Ecuador, discovered several machines mining the Aguarico riverbed near Cayambe Coca National Park. This came as a surprise to them because…

In the heart of the driest desert in the world, a company currently sanctioned for half a dozen environmental infractions continues to mine reserves of one of the most coveted…

Life is hard for the community of Trinidadcito, but its people don’t feel poor. Rather, they say they’re being punished for opposing the construction of a highway that would cut…

A palm oil supplier to PepsiCo, Mars, Hershey and Johnson & Johnson has resumed clearing intact forest in West Papua, Indonesia, despite pressure by other major companies, many of which…

In the town of Turkwel in Kenya’s vast Rift Valley region, 45-year-old Esther Aboi is busy placing pieces of wood inside her homemade kiln. The smoking firewood is an invasive…